Transcription
If you lined up every single person around the world, four out of every 10 would be deficient in iodine. This is a huge deal. There are many, many doctors, not to mention patients, who have no idea how important iodine is.
This is a topic that I've been studying since at least 2005, when I read a book written by my guest today, Dr. David Brownstein. Dr. Brownstein, welcome.
Hey, thank you for having me, Dr. Ken. Uh, it's a pleasure. Um, tell everybody a little about yourself, your qualifications, and how long you've been at this.
Well, um, I've been practicing medicine about 30 years. And I, um, went to the University of Michigan for undergrad. If you haven't heard, we're the national champions, defending national champions for the whole year. Yes, University of Michigan. Um, so I went to University of Michigan for undergrad and Wayne State University School of Medicine, and then did a family practice residency in family practice. And, uh, you know, my, my goal through my childhood was to, um, just, sorry about that, was to be a doctor. And, you know, be a conventional doctor. I didn't know anything about holistic medicine, and I didn't grow up in a holistic household. We didn't, we basically went to the doctor when we were sick, we took whatever they told us to take, and we never questioned anything. And I never took a vitamin in my life. Um, and so I began practicing conventional medicine. And then, um, six months into it, I had an epiphany. And, and I'll give you, I'll give you the story.
What, short or long version of the story?
Medium. Medium. All right. I was practicing conventional medicine. I wasn't interested in anything. I used to tell my patients, "Don't take vitamins, they're a waste of time." And, um, around six months into my practice of medicine, for three nights in a row, I had my first bout with insomnia for unknown reason. And I, you know, I started to get anxious at the end of that. And I'm getting ready to go to work, and I just blurted out to my wife, for the first time, "I don't want to be a doctor anymore." And she's known me since we were 18 years old. You know, we had $100,000 in student loans, and that's all I talked about. I, you know, before that, I felt it was my calling. I still feel like it's my calling. But, um, so she said, "What's wrong?" And I said, "I'm not helping anyone. I'm just treating them with drugs that aren't treating the underlying cause of their problems. And I'm having to treat them with more drugs to treat the problems from the first drugs." And, you know, I told her, "Unless I'm using an antibiotic to treat an infection, I didn't feel like I was treating the underlying cause of anything." And she said to me, "Well, what are you going to do?" And I said, "I don't know, but I can't do this for 30 years." And she said, "Why don't you do another residency?" And I said, "No, that would, one of those was enough."
So I, I met this chiropractor. And before then, I used to tell people, "Don't go see chiropractors." I never met one before. I never knew what they did. But, you know, you know how it was in med school, we were taught, "Don't refer to them, and they're dangerous." And, um, so I never referred to him. And, um, I never knew what the chiropractic philosophy was, never anything about him. So I had a patient who was helped by a chiropractor. He was bothering me to meet him. He was friends of mine. He said it was more than just adjusting, he was prescribing nutrition for him. And in that lack of sleep, I had seen him on that third day, after not sleeping for three nights in a row, or the fourth day. And he said, "Hey, why don't you meet Dr. Radkey?" And I think in this anxiety, lack of sleep, I said, "Fine." And this was about the 10th time he'd asked me to meet him. Um, so I called Dr. Radkey. Robert Radkey was in Birmingham, Michigan, you know, a few minutes from my house. I set up a dinner meeting with him the following Tuesday. And the following Tuesday comes around, I tell my wife, "I'm not going to go." After I worked all day, "It would be a waste of my time." She told me, "It would be rude. You already said it. Go and be nice." As I was walking out the door, I met him. He knew more functional biochemistry than I knew. He was talking about nutrition and how it relates to biochemistry. I didn't know any of that stuff. He got me a book at the meeting by Jonathan Wright, who's an allopathic physician. And I took the book home, read it till the middle of the night. Dr. Radkey became immediate friends. He was a nice guy, he was very smart, and we maintained a really deep friendship until, unfortunately, he died, you know, a period later. Um, and, um, I called my dad the next day to come in the office and get some blood work. My dad had a third, he had a heart attack at age 40, another heart attack at 42. Over the next 20 years, stenting, angioplasties. I don't know if they did stents then, they were doing balloons back then, I think. Um, but he had, you know, two bypass surgeries, angioplasties, and, um, 12 medications for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease. He looked awful. He was having continuous angina for 20 years. Based on what I talked with Dr. Radkey, based on what I read in that book, based on just pulling a couple of articles really quickly, I drew two blood tests on my dad. A, a thyroid hormone panel, instead of just drawing the TSH, is what I was taught in med school. And his testosterone levels. His testosterone levels came back as less than detectable limits. His thyroid levels in the lower part of the reference range. I put them on both natural testosterone, natural thyroid hormone. A week later, within seven days, his 20-year history of angina melted away, never to return. Within 30 days later, his cholesterol fell below 200, never changing any of his bad dietary habits. And he looked better. Re-evaluative. I no longer thought he was going to die. And I saw the changes in my dad, and I knew that's what I wanted to do in medicine. And I went on a journey to do it. And here I am, 30 years later, practicing a good form of medicine. I'm very happy I did that.
I love that story, and it mirrors my story in many ways. I'll tell you a funny thing about me. Back in about 2005, I came across this book, uh, called "Iodine: Why We Need It." And I was, I was allopathic trained at Upstate University. Exact same story. Didn't know anything about real physiology, uh, almost nothing about nutrition. And I, I had been reading a few articles about iodine. So I found your book, got it, and read it in probably one night. Just engulfed it. I'm like, "Holy crap!" And, you know, that's back before the internet was super fast. So I'm like, "When I get to work tomorrow, I gotta, I gotta look these citations up. I gotta look this stuff up. If this is true, then how does this dude in Michigan know this, and nobody else seems to know this? Why was I not taught this?" And so back in 2005 is when iodine jumped up on my radar. And you had, you completely changed the way I practice medicine. Reading your book, you're one of the key guys that kind of slapped me around and said, "No, doctor, you don't know everything. You were not taught almost anything, really. Uh, you need to keep digging. Now's the time to actually start learning. Now that you're in active practice. Should have been before that, but hey, what are you going to do?" And so down that rabbit hole I went. And I'm still fascinated by iodine. Not only how important it is to all mammals, not just humans, but also how ignored it is. Like it's just literally not a thing. It's not a thing doctors talk about. And so I talk about it all the time inside of our private group. And that's where we're live at right now. I'll post this later on YouTube. But I wanted our tribe members to have a chance to ask you questions directly, if that's okay.
Of course.
And so let's start out with just a general question. Why is medicine, seemingly the practice of modern medicine, why is it so blind? And we all took physiology, and we all took bio-chem and organic chemistry in undergrad. How, how do we not just understand intuitively, this is very, very important?
Well, the biochemistry that we took was taught very poorly. And we had to pass the test to move on. That's all we did. There was no functionality to it. You couldn't apply it to the patient in front of you. When I had the dinner with Dr. Radkey, I was shocked. It was actual functional biochemistry that could do. And that's what spurred me on, you know, was his discussion of biochemistry and how these nutrients interact with the biochemistry. So, in regards to iodine, the only thing I was taught in medical school was iodine deficiency was a, was cured with iodized salt. And that was it. It was, "You got enough iodine food, there's enough iodine salt, nobody needs it." So from my point in med school till, till I started researching things, I had no clue that there was any significance to it either. My turning point, the first 10 years of my practice, I was using, after treating my dad, every person that came in got a whole hormonal nutritional evaluation. So the things that I've really focused on were thyroid hormone, and then other bioidentical hormones, and then various nutritional items. Now, the first 10 years, there was no testing available. So I was putting, not everybody, I had about three quarters of my practice on thyroid hormone. The first 10 years of my practice, it was growing. I thought I was doing good. Patients were seeming to get better and telling me they're better. I wrote a book, you know, "Hypo," um, "Overcoming Thyroid Disorders." And, you know, I thought I was doing the right thing. And it was bothering me why I was putting so many people on thyroid hormone. So I would go back to the, the physiology and biochemistry of the thyroid gland and what it takes, and what are the co-factors needed to make thyroid hormone, and how they interact with one another. I started using those co-factors such as selenium and magnesium and vitamin C, B vitamins, and iodine. You can't make a thyroid hormone. In fact, you can't make any hormone in the body without iodine. Um, so nothing worked as well as thyroid hormone. Nothing, nothing worked as naturally as well as natural thyroid hormone. So I would try, and I kept coming back to iodine. I lived in Michigan, I live in Michigan, grew up in Michigan, practice in Michigan. It's, it's the, besides being the national champions in college football, it's, it's, uh, soil is one of the lowest iodine areas of the world, which is the Great Lakes Area, Michigan, and Indiana, Illinois, and that four-letter state to the south of us that I will not mention by name. And if I do mention it by name, it's a lower case, oh, not capitalized though. Um, so, um, all these states have very low iodine in their soils. In fact, one of the lowest iodine in the world. So as I got more into holistic medicine, I thought, "You, I was reading these articles, how low the soil is, and the goiter belt." And the history of goiter in the United States was cured in Michigan and Ohio when they iodized salt in those two areas because there was so much goiter, or swelling of the thyroid, which is a known iodine deficiency problem. Yes. So there was no, I couldn't order a good iodine test. So I would just try iodine, low amounts, medium amounts, high amounts. It didn't work. I'd get frustrated and leave. What turned me was 10 years into practicing holistic medicine, one of my journals, a letter to the editor was written by Dr. G. Abraham from California. He developed an iodine loading test. I called him immediately when I saw. But he became interested in me because of where I was located. He knew the, he knew about the goiter belt and the soil being low in iodine. And he offered to teach me how to do the laboratory work and the grunt work and the proper testing of iodine. And he offered to help me test my patients for iodine levels. And he developed a test called an iodine loading test, which is a much more functional test of iodine levels. So the first couple hundred patients that we tested together, you know, 97-point-something percent were extremely low on iodine. They weren't even low, they were like, like WHO criteria, severely deficient in iodine. And since then, we've tested between me and my partners, over 8,000 people. We're cruising on 9,000 soon. The same numbers hold true. It's over 97% significantly low in iodine, most severely low, unless, unless they've read my book or seen somebody else lecture about iodine, they're taking iodine. So when I started using iodine, what I found was I didn't need three-quarters of my patients on thyroid hormone. I needed a quarter of them on thyroid hormone. I found I didn't need two grains of natural thyroid hormone, I needed about a half a grain of natural thyroid hormone to get the same, same results, clinical results. So I also found breast cancer, thyroid cancer, pancreatic, ovarian, uterine, all the glandular problems doing much better on iodine. And then I wrote my book, as you had run into iodine, "Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It." And really, out of, out of everything that I've seen and do and done in 30 years and have learned, if the government storms into my office, which unfortunately they've done, and if they tell me, "There's one thing you can do holistically, the rest you got to go back to doing conventional medicine as being taught now," I would demand to be able to use iodine. And it's the biggest bang for the buck. It's the neatest thing.
You know, it's interesting when you said, you know, I became, I was interested in iodine. Everyone seems interested in iodine. Nobody, you know, it's just when I start talking about iodine, everyone's eyes light up a little bit. And they, they, you know, they always think it's a thing of the past. And, and it's not a thing of the past. You mentioned in your intro, four out of 10 people worldwide are deficient in iodine. That's going by WHO criteria, which are way too low. I say those way higher. Iodine deficiency is probably, I don't know if it's the single, it's not the single underlying cause, but it is a major cause, or probably the most important underlying cause of the, the one in seven women suffering from breast cancer in our country, one in three men having prostate cancer, the epidemic increases of pancreatic, ovarian, uterine, the thyroid cancer is the fastest growing cancer in the United States. All this, sort of, in my mind, in my research, is being driven in large part by iodine deficiency. That's affecting probably 97% of our country right now. And, you know, we're in a mess. Our levels are lower now than they were from our predecessors, you know, generations before. And our exposure to the toxic halogens, which makes the iodine deficiency worse, is up higher. I call it a double whammy of iodine deficiency. And we're suffering from this. And that's, you know, that's the epidemic of prostate, ovarian, uterine, thyroid, pancreatic cancer that we all know. I'm old enough to tell you, when I was a resident, the people who got pancreatic cancer were alcoholics, older people. I never saw younger people with pancreatic cancer. I got people in my practice with pancreatic cancer in their late 30s now. I never saw women, teenage girls getting diagnosed with breast cancer and having to go to a funeral like I did the other day from a 28-year-old patient dying of stage four breast cancer. Um, you know, I never, this stuff is ridiculous what's happening right now. And, you know, this should be our highest levels of our government should be studying this and, you know, getting information about this. And they just, it's just business as usual in our country. You know?
Yeah, I totally agree. But it seems like they're interested with other things that they deem to be more important. Although I would disagree with them. Uh, you mentioned the goiter belt. And so that kind of brings me to my first point is that, uh, people, even doctors, people who should know better, they think that iodine is somehow created in food. And that if you're, and if you look up stuff on the USDA Food Data Central, how much iodine does this have? Any, it has a number. But what people need to understand, especially doctors and dietitians, they should absolutely know this, that if there's no iodine in the soil that the vegetable grew in, or that the animal grazed on, then by definition, there can be no iodine in that food source. So the, so the RDA, the, the recommended daily allowance of iodine was established in 1924, me, I don't, somewhere in the 1920s, 20s, for preventing goiter in people. It was not established as the optimum amount of iodine for the rest of the body. So iodine, every cell in the body needs and requires iodine. It's an essential element. We can't manufacture it. We have to get it from our diet, period. Um, you know, in the glandular tissue, I, I call this the iodine, um, the iodine, um, continuum. Isn't the right word, but there, there's a progression of iodine deficiency. So if I call this iodine sufficient, that means there's enough iodine for all the iodine receptors in our thyroid, our eyeballs, our brain, you know, the ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, pancreas, and skin, and everything else in the body. Since every cell needs and requires it, and iodine deficiency, the first thing that happens in the glandular tissue, which is the, which is the thyroid, ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, pancreas, is you get cysts. What, what are we seeing? 88% of us women have fibrocystic breast disease. Men got cysts on their prostate gland. Thyroid cysts occur all the time. Um, so cysts are the first thing that happens. If it goes on longer, the cysts become hard and nodular. Same tissues, same problems. If it goes on longer, they take a hyperplastic appearance, if you have a biopsy and examine it under a microscope. And the end of that continuum, um, is cancer. This has been shown in animal, test tube, and human studies. What's also been shown is iodine's been able to halt and sometimes reverse this progression in animal, test tube, and human studies. Um, so iodine deficiency could explain, you know, probably the worst problems we're facing in our country right now. And, and nobody seems interested in it except for holistic doctors. And except for lay people, they seem interested in it. Absolutely. But the conventional market, you know, we have this big cancer medical industrial complex built up. You get diagnosed, they're great at diagnosing. They're super good at diagnosing. They're super good at prescribing their therapies. But they're no good at prevention. And no good at even asking the question, "Why did one in seven women get breast cancer in the United States? Why did I have to go to a funeral from a 28-year-old female dying of metastatic breast cancer when she ain't the only 20-year-old patient of mine having breast cancer?" You know, "Why is thyroid cancer the fastest growing cancer in the United States? Why do we spend 20% of our GMP on all this stuff when the next country spends around 10% of their G&P and they have better health outcomes and they live longer?" But, you know, that, that's where we are these days. And, you know, I'm lucky. I like practicing medicine because most of my friends who are practicing conventional medicine don't like it. Right. And I'm sure you're seeing the same thing. You know?
Yeah, burnout among physicians, I think, is at an all-time high. And that's because they're just pill mills. That's what they're doing. They see something, they write a prescription, and that's it. Nothing, nothing's ever cured.
So you mentioned earlier that, uh, you cannot create iodine in your body. And indeed, the broccoli, if there was no iodine in the soil, then there's no iodine in that broccoli. If there's, if there was no iodine in the grass the cow grazed on, then the cow's not going to have be a source of iodine. And we see this in when people live within 20 miles of an ocean, the ocean mist, the ocean spray, the evaporation, typically there's plenty of iodine in that soil. But the further you move into the interior of a continent, the less and less iodine, typically. And that's why Michigan, Wisconsin, the goiter belt is so deficient. It's so far from the ocean. Uh, and you said also that it's more than just thyroid. And I think that's super important for everybody to understand. I, when I was digging into this, I found a study. They had tested 84 different cells from the human body, all over the human body. Every single cell that's ever been tested. Dr. Brownstein has something called a sodium iodide sorter. Every single one. I don't think we found a single human cell line yet that doesn't have a sodium iodide sorter. Tell us, what does that mean that that's on every cell?
So the sodium iodide importer, you can think about it like a taxi cab. It's, it's waiting for iodine to move, come into one passenger seat or one, uh, the driver's side seat in the back. And then at the same time, a sodium atom comes into the, to the other side seat. And that taxi cab can now move that iodine atom over the cell membrane and deposit it in the thyroid, or the ovaries, or the uterus, or the skin, or the muscles, or the fat, or wherever the brain, or wherever it's got to go. And then iodine can do its appropriate job. We were designed by our maker to have iodine receptors in every cell and to have these sodium iodine sorters moving in, moving into a cell. The problem is that, um, these taxi cabs can also, when iodine sufficient, the taxi cabs can also move toxic halides like bromide into the seats and then move those over to the cell. And bromide in the thyroid gland, or the breasts, or the ovaries, or the uterus. And, um, our exposure. So, so the halides are group 17 in the periodic table. If everyone can remember from chemistry in high school or beyond, periodic table has all the elements of the universe, and then they're all grouped together in similarities. And group 17's on the right side of the periodic table. It includes, um, fluoride, chloride, bromide, and iodine. Now, of those four halides, there's a fifth, but that doesn't, I don't think that we know of any human significance to that. Of those four halides, two are toxic agents that have no known therapeutic value in the body. And two are essential. We can't live without either of the two. The two we can't live without that are essential are iodine and chloride. Chloride is found in salt, um, sodium chloride. And there's, you know, over a gram of chloride in the body if we had dry weight, if we needed it, if we need to, you know, measure it. But two of those halides, bromide and fluoride, are toxic with no known therapeutic value in the body. Our exposure to fluoride and bromide are astronomically higher now compared to the we, in our, in our predecessors. And what, what I found with working with Dr. Abraham and then doing my own testing was, um, bromide in particular is in the sickest patients. And the ones with breast disease, or prostate disease, or glandular disease, they usually, you know, I did a study in my, I think it's in my iodine book, comparing a group of breast cancer patients to non-breast cancer patients. I found bromide levels twofold higher in the breast cancer patients, iodine levels twofold lower. So, you know, um, when you start, you know, if you start thinking about this, our iodine levels in our food supply has gone down over the last 50 years, as shown by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. And our bromide exposure has gone up at the same time. What do we expect is going to happen? What you can expect is happen where iodine concentrates in the body, there's going to be problems. Where does it concentrate in the body? In the glands. Fastest growing cancer in the US, thyroid cancer. One in seven women, breast cancer. One in three men, prostate cancer. Ovarian, uterine, pancreatic, exploding at exponential rates. And I think that, um, iodine deficiency, certainly, I don't think it's the sole cause of it, but it, it certainly could, it's a big piece of that pie for all those things. And, yeah, we recognize that until we treat it, we're just going to keep running in circles, diagnosing more and more breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, and doing the same old thing. And, you know, really seeing our quality of life go down and our, our longevity go down, which we're seeing.
I totally agree. And, and until we start to look at root causes, we're just going to keep wondering, "I wonder why cancer rates are keep going up. I don't get it." Um, what about testing? So if somebody's watching this right now, you, I've seen, you know, I've seen, and I think it's been thoroughly discounted as a reliable way to measure, but you've seen people rub povidone-iodine on their skin, and then if it absorbs over a certain length of time, then you may be iodine deficient. That probably helps. It gives some information, but I don't think it's reliable enough. How do you, these days, without doing the, the iodine loading, how do you test for iodine in your patients?
It's a great question. So, those first 10 years of my practice, when I am, you know, looking at the co-factors for how to make thyroid work better so I don't have to put, you know, I couldn't figure out why did our, you know, I was asking myself the question, "Why did our maker make us have to take, design us so we needed iodine? We need a thyroid hormone to feel good as we age, middle age and beyond?" And, you know, that didn't make sense to me. We, we're designed pretty well if we supply the body with its basic raw materials and needs. Um, so, you know, um, the test you asked me about testing. So during the first 10 years of my practice, the only test that was available to me that I knew of was that skin test. So you would rub iodine in the oxidized form, which is brownish, on the skin anywhere, and it turns the skin brown, it stains it brown where the iodine hits it. And then you wait to see how long the brown color goes away. So the theory is that as the iodine is absorbed in the skin, brown color goes away, the quicker it's absorbed, the more deficient in iodine you are. That would be fine if it worked. But there was a study, and I have a study in my iodine book, that looked at this, and they found 80% of the iodine rubbed down the skin sublimates off into a gaseous phase and doesn't go inside to the body. Goes this way, into a gaseous phase. So it's not a great test to do that. That's why Dr. Abraham designed the iodine loading test. And the iodine loading test was a functional test where you do, you take 50 milligrams of iodine at time zero, and you collect 24 hours of urine. So for a whole day, 24 hours, and you collect, you know, finish the urine collection 24 hours later. And then you measure how much iodine comes out in the urine. The reason you can do this is the kidneys clear about 98% of the iodine that you take orally. So you know the amount coming in, you know the amount coming out of your urine, you can, you can subtract the numbers and say, "Well, X percent, X amount stayed in the body from 50 milligrams." So what we found was that when somebody's iodine sufficient, and their whole body has enough iodine, that they're, you know, every, every receptor is saturated with it, thyroids working, you know, everything's working appropriately with iodine, that when you take 50 milligrams orally, 24 hours later, you'll pee out 45 milligrams of that. So 5 milligrams of iodine is an amount that you generally need on a daily basis to replenish and to reestablish iodine levels into those sodium iodine supporters and into the tissues. If someone's iodine deficient, let's say they take in 50 milligrams, maybe they'll pee out 25 milligrams 24 hours later. That means they have 50% excretion, not 5%, which is 45 milligrams, where they held on to 5 milligrams. Now they peed out 25 milligrams and they held on to 25 milligrams. They're more, more deficient. If somebody peed out, you know, um, 10% of the iodine, you know, peed out 5 milligrams and held on to 45 milligrams, they would be considered more deficient than the ones who are 50%, than the ones who were 5%. I mean, so the more you hang on to, the more your body's soaking it up. And what we found was that, um, as people took 50 milligrams of iodine a day, when redid their testing 30 days later, 60 days later, a year later, and I have this chronicle in my book, that their, the amount they retained, let's just say someone started off with 50% excretion, so they would retain 25 milligrams of that 50 milligram load. 30 days later, they'd retain 10 milligrams. So now they'd excrete 90%. They got better, but they still needed a little bit more work. It might take them a few more months to get to that 5%. But that, that was a really cool test that, you know, Dr. Abraham developed. I was there helping and fine-tuning it and learning how to actually work in a lab and measure it. And, um, it, it was fun doing all that. And that just kind of proved to me how deficient I, I was. And what we, what we found was when we gave people 50 milligrams of iodine, the amount of bromide that would come out in their urine was just enormous. And what they were doing was competitive inhibition. So in those halides with the group 17, which they're all listed, you know, down a row, um, if you give iodine, and iodine binds to its receptor, it's going to displace bromide. The body's going to get rid of it. So you're detoxifying from bromide, um, and hopefully fluoride. And, you know, giving the body what we were designed for was, you know, iodine for the iodine receptors and not bromide and not fluoride.
And have you seen, uh, that fluoride is pushed off the receptor in the same manner as bromide is?
So fluoride is the smallest halide. It's a very electronegative substance. And in, in the group of halides, first on top, and, um, being very electronegative, it's really reactive in the body. The body does not like fluoride floating around being really reactive. The body is not a good thing. It poisons hundreds of enzymes in the body, disables them. Fluoride is a known neurotoxin. It's, you know, high levels are associated with cancer in boys. Um, what, what is it? It's a bone cancer. I'm blocking on the name of it. But teenage boys have higher bone cancer in fluoridated areas and non-areas, non-fluoridated areas. Um, so in our testing, we tried to find, what we found was bromide coming out in huge amounts when we gave iodine. We couldn't document the fluoride coming out. And there were, there were two problems with that. Number one, fluoride is so toxic, the human body doesn't want it floating around. So when you get fluoride in through drinking tap water that's been fluoridated, or swallowing, you know, toothpaste that's been fluoridated, um, the body tries to bind it off right away. And where does fluoride store up in the body? Mostly in the bone. And that's where, you know, that's where the fluoride problems, that's where the boys are getting bone cancer. And you're getting, you know, lots of bone problems from fluoridated areas like osteoporosis and things. So a better measure of fluoride would be doing bone biopsies, but we couldn't do that. So we couldn't document fluoride coming out. I think fluoride's a problem. But we certainly documented and wrote about the bromide coming out. And I wrote about that in my book. And I wrote about that in articles. And a lot of people have fluoride or fluorine on their radar. They're, they realize they need to try to minimize that. So many people will use reverse osmosis or drink distilled water. But what they don't realize is that almost all, uh, prepared drinks that you would buy are fluoridated. And this includes all the soft drinks. Most fruit juice is made with fluoridated water that you would buy. And there's over 200 different prescription medicines that can contain fluoride. And so many people are trying to minimize their exposure to fluoride, but they're failing miserably because they don't know that it's literally in everything. It's a terrible thing. It's thrown in our water supply. And so you can't choose not to have it because you gotta drink water. And it costs you, you have to get special filters to take fluoride out. It's so small that you need these special filters, which cost money. So of course, poor people, middle-class people, you know, can't afford to buy expensive water purifying systems. And they're just being medicated or poisoned from the water supply with fluoride that shouldn't be in there. There's only two countries left of fluoridating primarily, fluoridating the water supply. It's us and New Zealand. Europe has all gotten rid of it. Israel was the last Western country to get rid of it because they realized the harm was greater than the benefit with it. And I don't even know if there's any benefit with fluoridated water. There may be some benefit with topical fluoride application in toothpaste that you just spit out. But exactly. You know, the last time I checked, the, the US, 66% of the water supply in the US, yeah, was fluoridated. And individual water municipalities can, they can vote with their city council to remove the fluoride from the water. It's not a federal mandate. And we actually did this in the Camden, Tennessee water supply back in 2013. Council and got that, got it taken out of the water supply here in Camden. Only about a third of the water supply is fluoridated. And then, like you said, in the European Union, only 3%. And most of that's naturally occurring fluoride. They, they almost don't fluoridate at all because they've, I don't know, read the research that it's really not a good drinking fluoridated water in any meaningful way protects your teeth. And here in, in the United States, there's even, you can buy water for pregnant women and newborn infants that you would make formula with, or the mom would drink that when she's pregnant. It's fluoridated water. Water. And there's never been any research documentation that that protects the, the erupted teeth and the baby, that that in any way benefits the baby whatsoever. It's, it's just, it's almost madness how people have just taken it for granted that fluoride must be good because it's in the water. It's when you look at the original fluoride studies done in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Muskegon, Michigan, they were stopped early. It was really poorly, very poor science. There was no science there. It was, they had an agenda, and they got the agenda done. Was to put, you know, for the agricultural big agricultural companies to get rid of their waste product of fluoride and dump it in our water supply. And our government let them do it. And our government still lets them do it. There's a good case going on right now where a group of moms got it going, and they're suing the federal government on this. And the judges, it was already presented, we're waiting for the results of it. And the judge, you know, I followed that case. I think the judge is going to rule for us. And when that comes out, that'll be interesting because, sort of like the COVID vaccine got everyone thinking about vaccines in general. Wait, wait till this comes out. And the government's got to explain why they fluoridated our water supply for was after World War II. So what is that, 75 years or so? And where was the science behind it? There was no terrible science. Terrible science. It's a crime. It is a crime.
Yeah, I totally agree. Now, let's talk about dosage. So, uh, I, I looked up the National Institutes of Health, and they say that an adult needs 150 micrograms a day. You need more if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, which I definitely agree with that. But I think you need way more than they recommend. I find it funny that they say that for, uh, newborns from zero to six months of age, they need 110 micrograms, almost as much as an adult. But then an adult only needs 150 micrograms. So what I recommend to, to my people in the tribe here, I actually formulated a daily mineral drop, and it has 500 micrograms, so half a milligram a day. And then I recommend they use Lugol's 2% anywhere from one to three drops a day. And then try to eat some iodine-rich foods, which is typically seafood. Um, am I, am I recommending too much iodine to my people, or is that not enough? Is that sufficient, or is that inadequate?
Well, I would respectfully tell you, you're, you're underdosing your population. And, you know, we, we, in my book, we, we talk about that. You know, and when I lecture, I talk about how did we come up with, you know, these milligram dosing of iodine. Um, and there's, there's science behind it now. There's a, I get, I get a lot of criticism for, you know, saying my, my average patient's on 25 milligrams of iodine, an adult. And if they have candidiasis, breast, ovary, uterus, prostate, pancreas, thyroid, any, any form of glandular disease, I'll give them more. Um, if they have fibrocystic breast disease, or breast cancer, thyroid, you know, whatever, I give them more. You know, I've got story after story of women with fibrocystic breast disease and thyroid nodules where you, you get enough iodine in, in the system, that it, it re, it causes that continuum to reverse itself back to normal tissue. The problem, the problem we've got, that continuum, one more time. Nick had a question. So here's iodine sufficiency, normal architecture of the glandular tissue, thyroid, no, no, no, nothing wrong with it. Looks normal, feels normal, it acts normal, it's working normally. Thyroid, ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, pancreas. The first step that happens in iodine deficiency, she starts to get cysts or abnormal growth in these tissues. If it goes on longer, the cysts become hard and nodular. If it goes on longer, they become hyperplastic on a, on a, um, you know, biopsy. And the end, the end of that stage is cancer. It's a progression. And iodine has been shown in studies to be able to halt this progression. I've seen it in my practice, and then be able to reverse it. So I say, if they got glandular problems, which, you know, 88% of women have fibrocystic breast disease, you know, one in three men, prostate cancer, one in seven women, breast cancer, they're going to need more. Um, what I found is our exposure to bromide. You know, I'm probably sitting on bromide in this chair. It's in, it's in cushions, mattresses, and cushions, and carpet, and curtains, fire retardants. It's in these that we all have. Um, it's in, it's in food, and it's in drink as, uh, brominated vegetable oil. Um, it's all over the place. And then when you, when you, when you throw in fluoridated water, and as you mentioned, all the fluoride in the juices and drinks and everything else that's out there, you know, our iodine requirements have gone up over the years, not gone down. And I've tried lower doses of iodine and then done the testing on it. It didn't work until I got up to around 25 milligrams for most people, more, you know, adult size. And then, you know, smaller amounts for kids. Yeah. Um, so, so if we were living in the days before the ubiquity of fluoride everywhere, before the ubiquity of bromide everywhere, then what I'm recommending is plus or minus six milligrams a day, then that would possibly be enough. But when you add in the bromide and the, the fluoride, they're competing for the receptor so aggressively that we now need more than that six milligrams. Is that, am I hearing that's correct?
You know, the RDA was not set for optimal levels. It was set. Correct. The, the story of the RDA is really interesting. It actually goes, you know, I quickened it. But what was happening in the 1920s, well, the 1900s, as the US was was moving from west to east across, as the people were moving west to east to, to I'm sorry, east to west to to colonize the country, to, you know, give us what we got today, um, the goiter epidemic skyrocketed throughout the entire United States. But primarily, the Great Lakes was the biggest area. Goiter is a swollen thyroid. Um, so the, it wasn't just the people that were suffering thyroid problems, animals were having procreation problems and thyroid problems. So the animals were not, the farmed animals were not growing to the right size. They were not procreating correctly. And there was a worry that the human, as a human population expanded from east to west across the United States, that our food supply was going to be outstripped because we weren't going to be able to keep up with it and raising enough animals to feed the population. So there was a doctor in Ohio, um, I'm sorry, I'm blocking on his name, but he had written a paper on iodine in med school. And the government called upon him to do a study in farm animals to figure out the minimal amount of iodine needed to their to their food source to help them procreate better and to help better thyroid function. So we put little amounts of iodine and varying amounts in feed, found the minimal amount where the animals were procreating correctly, growing correctly, and estimated from that the amount humans would need. That's how the RDA was set. So the RDA was not set for optimal levels. And, and saturation of the breasts and the ovaries and the uterus and the thyroid. Basically, just enough for goiter. That's, that's what that was. Fine back then. It was, hey, it was one of the first public miracles. There was no question. It was really a fabulous. He added a natural substance to salt, people took it, and this national problem that we were having just magically disappeared. But the national problem may have been fine back then. But when we started fluoridating the water, and we started brominating and getting exposed to more and more of these toxins, our iodine requirements went up. They didn't go down. And the RDA never changed. And that's where the, that's where the problem became. Exactly.
Exactly. And so you mentioned earlier about the skin test, that iodine can do something that many, many things can't do, which is sublimate. So let's talk about iodized salt, because many people think, "Well, I eat iodized salt, so I'm getting enough iodine. What's the problem there?"
Well, I've written a book, "Salt Your Way to Health." And I had, you know, I, I quickly found when I was using, you know, I, I quickly started when I started looking at biochemistry and physiology with patients and looking at what they need to run these biochemical pathways optimally, you know, sodium was needed to run thousands of different chemical reactions in the body. Um, I was taught in med school, "Salt's bad, right? Any amount of salt is going to cause hypertension, and you need to lower." No, salt's the best salt in the diet. Well, I can tell you, when I started studying physiology and checking chemistries on everybody and really looking at things, I realized you can't live with no salt. I mean, it's incompatible with life. Um, and we weren't getting in enough salt. And think about what I said with those sodium iodine importers. You need iodine on one side of the taxi cab, and you need sodium on the other side to move that iodine across the cell membrane. So I started using unrefined salt in my practice. And then immediately, I saw a benefit with it. There were two major benefits. Number one, most people were deficient in salt. And I can tell you that today, I still see it. And, um, salt helps you detoxify from toxic halides, bromide, maybe fluoride. So in, in medicine, there's a lot of drugs that are brominated. And still today, some drugs are brominated. Some asthma drugs, and there's some other drugs that bromine is part of their ingredient. Spa dextrin, um, and then relistor, and there's several others. But those are antidepressants too, that have fluoride and bromide as part of their, their genetic or their chemical makeup. So, um, where was I headed with that? Um, um, so, so our exposure to these things has just dramatically increased. We're getting it from our drugs. And I, I, you know, we need iodine to, to help us detoxify from that.
We shouldn't be taking drugs, certainly with bromide in it. I totally agree. And then the the list of drugs with fluoride in it, it's over 200 drugs. The most common ones, basically any SSRI like Prozac, um, um, Zoloft, all those guys have fluoride. Lipitor does, Zetia does. Zetia for cholesterol. Prevastatin does. C does. Flas does. Cypro, many of the of the the CYO family of antibiotics are just laced with fluoride, and many people don't realize that. It's terrible. It's a, it's a, uh, you know, I don't know what to say. If our regulators were looking out for us, this wouldn't have happened. I totally agree. I totally agree. They don't look out for us. And if that wasn't proven during COVID, nothing was proven. But you know, they, they don't care. They just, they're, they're an extension of Big Pharma, and they're there, they're there to do Big Pharma's bidding and to, you know, keep that medical industrial Pharma complex going, and they do a pretty good job of that.
So where I got my recommendations from was because, you know, in med school, in residency, I was scared to death of iodine. Um, you know, a couple of iodine preparations have a skull and crossbones on them, so I'm like, oh my God, too much must be bad. And so then I thought, okay, the the the RDI is 150 mics a day. That's just enough to prevent a goiter. Okay, got that. And then, doing my research, I found out that the average person in Japan eats tons of seafood, and they usually ingest about 16 milligrams, give or take, uh, which would be 16,000 micrograms a day. And they don't have thyroid cancer. They don't have hyperthyroidism at any greater rate. They don't have Hashimoto's at any greater rate than we do here in the United States. You know what they, you know what they have, Ken? They have less breast cancer, and less prostate cancer, and less [inaudible] you know, than we do. Yep. And so I thought, okay, in between 150 micrograms and 16,000 micrograms, somewhere in there is probably a spot where it's not going to be, you can't even pretend like it's dangerous. And if you do take too much, you're just going to urinate it out. But I guarantee you, 150 mics is not enough, especially when I found out about the sodium iodide symporter that's on every single cell in the human body. 150 mics just ain't going to do it. It's got to be more than that. And that's where I came up with the five, six, seven milligrams. Uh, and, and so, but that, you think that's probably still not enough in modern society where we're just basically bathed in bromide and fluoride? I can tell you from doing testing on, I don't know if we got over a thousand patients, but you know, multiple hundreds of patients, it wasn't enough. I tried varying amounts, and 25 milligrams was enough for most people. 12 wasn't enough in our world. Um, 50 was enough. And then beyond, you know, and if people had, like I said, if they have goiter disease already, then I would use, you know, I would use more than 25. But I, I found that, um, I, I tried six milligrams, it, it just wasn't enough, particularly, I think, not enough to treat breast disease or thyroid disease or something like that. But I don't think it's enough to prevent it either. Not, not just not in the world we live in today. It's just, we're, we're in a toxic mess right now.
Gotcha. Lynn says, uh, two drops of Lugol's, 2%. I'm assuming I'm not doing her math here. Is, is 3333 per more than the recommended amount? Sometimes she has a metallic taste in her mouth. Is she taking too much iodine? Well, you, you know, you need to, my suggested question is to work with an iodine-literate physician who can test you. And two drops of Lugol's, if we're talking 5% iodine, is about 6.25 milligrams per drop. It's 12 milligrams. In my practice, that's, you know, I would put somebody sensitive, who's, you know, a little more sensitive to things, on that dose. Most people, I start at 25 milligrams. So you're too low when you're talking about compared to the RDA. The RDA is not optimal levels. The RDA is to prevent goiter. That's what was set up for 100 years ago. It was never designed for optimal levels. Never designed to prevent breast disease or thyroid disease. Was designed to prevent, I mean, thyroid disease, thyroid cancer, never designed to prevent it. It was designed to prevent goiter in the vast majority of us back then, when our exposure to bromide and fluoride was not what it is today. Um, so those were different time frames. And, you know, you can, you know, as we're talking, you can see it's, it's not going to be enough. You know, five, six milligrams, I, I can just tell you from my personal experience, I tried that, it wasn't enough.
Gotcha. Question from Nicolette. Can you talk about your success with iodine mitigating viral infections? Do you ever nebulize iodine? Hello, Nicolette. Um, she's a patient of mine. So, um, I, you know, as I was reading about iodine, going back to the old literature, um, this was 20, 25 years ago. You know, doctors used to have people nebulize with iodine when they were sick with lung infections or colds or, you know, um, pneumonia or something like that. So we, you know, I began using it, have people nebulize with iodine, you know, two decades ago or a little bit more than that. And then when COVID came around, nebulized iodine and peroxide was sort of a mainstay that I, I instituted with my patients. And out of the whole natural therapies that I did during COVID, you know, we, we didn't close during COVID, we stayed open, we saw patients, we treated them. You know, we did what the oath, I, I follow the oath that I took in med school. And, um, out of all the things I did, the nebulized iodine, nebulized peroxide was the best thing that I did. And it is simply the best thing that that people can do when they're sick with an upper respiratory or lung problem. And I'm talking about fibrosis of the lungs, COPD of the lungs, lung cancer. Nebulized peroxide and iodine is just a fabulous therapy. Much less for COVID or for flu or, you know, any of the cold stuff that you cause you to hack and cough and, you know, wheeze and things like that.
Excellent. Uh, displaced. Who your, when TSH is out of range, 20 years ago, asked for Synthroid to lose weight, put on 75 mics, levothyroxine, generic Synthroid. Still on the same dose. Diagnosed with hypothyroidism, no weight loss. Am I really hypothyroid? My TSH was 2.2 last week while taking the 75 mics. What do you make of that? Um, first 10 years of my practice, that's what I was doing was putting people on thyroid hormone. And, you know, they were better. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. You know, now I look back and I'm like, and what was I doing? But the next 20 years, up to now, I put people on, look, if they have a thyroid problem, I put them on iodine first. Recheck their thyroid levels a few weeks later, see if it normalizes. And then I'll put them on thyroid hormone. And now, the combination of iodine and thyroid together, I'm able to use much lower thyroid levels. So I would find, find an iodine-literate physician to work with. They can help you with that.
If somebody has hyperthyroidism, do they still need a daily supply of iodine? So the treatment, the treatment, this is the biggest thing I get criticized for is autoimmune thyroid disease and hyperthyroid. That iodine is going to put fuel on the fire. And if you, if you, if you Google me for that quote, you'll see that quote. I did make that somewhere in the first five years of my holistic practice because I was scared about iodine, like you were, right? I thought it would fuel up Graves' disease or Hashimoto's disease, and I, I was scared of using it too. Um, so, so for Graves' disease, Graves' disease is, um, a hyperthyroid condition, um, where the thyroid gland gets overstimulated with, uh, these immunoglobulins, and it's like a fire burns in the thyroid, and it releases a lot of thyroid hormone, and it can make people hyper and nervous and jittery. And these are the people with buggy eyes coming out of their head that, you know, sometimes you'll see. Um, it's a, it's a pretty miserable disease for people that have it. The treatment for Graves' disease, um, 100 years ago, was iodine. And they used iodine in large amounts. It was usually hundreds of milligrams of iodine, and it would cool off Graves' disease. There's case history after case history in the literature back then. If someone had to have surgery to have Graves' disease thyroid removed because they just couldn't get it controlled, what they would do is put them on a couple hundred milligrams of iodine to cool off the thyroid, and then take the thyroid out. It would shrink, less invasive. I use iodine for Graves very successfully. Um, the treatment right now for Graves' disease in our country is radioactive iodine treatment, and it's a dangerous treatment. This radio, the theory is radioactive iodine is taken up in the thyroid and kills the thyroid. Well, radioactive iodine is also taken up at the same time in your breasts, your ovaries, your uterus, your pancreas, your thyroid, taken up in your feet because there's been a, there's been a study which showed the scan of the body after taking radioactive iodine, it's all over. And, um, radioactive iodine is associated with increased rates of cancer years, years later down the road. Of course, that's one of the big threats with a nuclear blast. You gotta, you gotta saturate your thyroid with as much iodine as possible to to protect yourself from the radioactive iodine. I can tell you, after 30 years of practicing holistic medicine, I have never sent a patient for radioactive iodine. And over the years, I've sent people for thyroidectomies for Graves' disease. I just couldn't get it, the thyroid was so infected, inflamed, that you just couldn't get it back to normal. And, um, I had them do thyroidectomies. Um, but it's a couple of patients over 30 years. Um, the vast majority of patients, I've treated them with iodine. It's part of a holistic treatment regimen. I describe it in my iodine book, you know, how to, how to, uh, how I did that, and I still do it today. My partners do it today. We, we like treating Graves' disease. It's, it's because it's an interesting thing. Hashimoto's disease is another autoimmune thyroid disease that's increased at epidemic rates over the last 30 years. When I was young and in practice, you would see Hashimoto's a little bit, but, you know, not like now, man. You're seeing kids with Hashimoto's. Yep. My two girls, who are both physicians working in my practice now, were diagnosed by my wife because I couldn't see it back then. When we were at dinner one night, when they were about 10 and nine years old, and asked me, do you think they got a thyroid problem because they're complaining of being headache and headachy and tired? And I remember I had like a soup spoon near my mouth when she said, do you think they have a thyroid problem? And I, like, I look at her, and I just put my other hand in my head and I drop the soup spoon. I'm like, yeah, they probably do. I, I'm treating all these people but not treating my kids. Yep. My kids at a young age diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, titers in the hundreds. You know, I immediately put them on iodine, um, and cleaned up their diet. They had a good diet. Took them off gluten, though they weren't off gluten before then. And then corrected some, they were already getting nutritional support back then. But the iodine started bringing their titers down. Um, my daughter Haley's 29, Jesse's 28. Haley has no signs of Hashimoto's. Jesse, very, very low titers below 10. I would call her not Hashimoto, but, you know, I'm nitpicking a little bit. And, um, you know, some of my colleagues, my holistic colleagues, you know, many natural paths really kind of jab at me that if you have Hashimoto's, you shouldn't take iodine. Hashimoto's causes or iodine causes Hashimoto's disease. Well, I have one comment that I would like, uh, like them to discuss with me. Over the last 30, over the last 40, 50 years, have iodine levels gone up or down across the United States? According to the NHANES data, they've gone down 50% over that same time period. As Hashimoto's gone up or down across the United States? They've gone up exponentially. At the same time, iodine levels have gone down. That's called a negative association. This negative association disproves iodine is causing Hashimoto's disease, period. That's the end of the story with it. There's something else. And I think what's causing it is, you know, just the whole glyphosate on our, on our grain supply and the toxicity issues and, and coupled with iodine deficiency. So I can tell you, I have an N of one in my family who took iodine and have virtually no signs of Hashimoto's disease. So all she needs is an N of one for any hypothesis to blow it out of the water, because a hypothesis has to withstand all criticism. So I, I talk about that in my iodine book. I have a whole chapter on that. I can tell you from treating patients for 30 years, that's nonsense. Yes, I totally agree.
Are you a fan of desiccated thyroid replacement for people who need thyroid hormone, or are you a Synthroid fan? So my first 10 years of my practice, I, I would have told you I'd use, I recommend natural desiccated thyroid hormone. And in my thyroid book, I talk about that. Um, and, you know, it's got the glandular part of the thyroid gland with selenium and some B vitamins, some other things, and some other, you know, we don't even know everything that's in there. But all that has an effect on, you know, helping someone who's having a glandular problem. So first 10 years, that's primarily what I use. I can tell you, I still primarily use that today, but I'm not as, I'm not as hardcore, because what I found is once I have enough iodine, it generally doesn't matter which thyroid they're on, whether it be T4 only like Synthroid or or or desiccated thyroid hormone. They seem to do well on both of them. So I, I don't, I don't, I'm not as militant as I was about that back in the day.
Gotcha. Again, please talk about iodine used to condition dough in the past and how it was replaced with bromide. I think in recent times, this has also been discontinued. So as we mentioned earlier, um, thanks Nicolette. As we mentioned earlier, um, iodine was, was in, in, um, flour to make bakery products, and it's used as a conditioner to to make it fluffy. And, and for some reason, in the early 1970s, iodine was substituted for bromide. And it's not clear why that was the case, but that's what happened. And, um, so the, it wasn't a mandate by the government, but it was kind of just everybody just did it all at once. I'm guessing it was cheaper, is what I'm guessing. I don't know. Maybe it's cheaper. The other, the other thing that may have happened was it was around the same time that radioactive iodine became in use for treating, um, hyperthyroid problems. So radioactive iodine works better. People are iodine deficient because it's got all the receptors looking for iodine. So when you give them a dose of radioactive iodine, it gets soaked up by the thyroid. Doesn't work so well if they have enough iodine. So I'm not sure what the true answer to that was. But the the substitution of iodine for bromide was just a, a disaster in our food supply. And I believe that's what's led to this epidemic of goiter disease, breast, over, uterus, pancreas, thyroid, you know, prostate. Yes.
Uh, Cass says, can you take too much? If so, what are the signs and symptoms that you've taken too much iodine? You can take too much of anything. You can drink too much water. You can, you know, you can, uh, take too much of anything. But if you have good kidney function, you should be able to take a lot of iodine and excrete the excess. Um, there is, the, the guy who won the Nobel Prize for discovery of vitamin C, Szent-Györgyi, took over a gram of iodine, you know, a thousand milligrams. Um, I'm talking 25, 50 milligrams, and then, you know, a few hundred milligrams sometimes in people with, you know, stage four prostate, breast, thyroid, you know, some kind of cancer. Um, but, you know, my partner has has prescribed, you know, hundreds and hundreds of milligrams for people. If you have normal kidney function, you know, it shouldn't be a problem. Now, you, the one thing when you take thyroid, because you start to mobilize bromide or or loosen bromide and probably fluoride to get out of the body, you can get these detox reactions and not feel so good. That's why taking salt with it goes hand in hand. You know, I mean, I've written 16 books. I write about all this stuff because I see what works in my practice. I have a book on salt. I have a book on iodine. I have a book on thyroid. And, you know, it's, it's, it's cool when you when you meld sort of the biochemistry, physiology, and clinical part of medicine together and see the results happen.
I agree. Here's a question. This keeps me up at night on many topics. What about kids? What about our kids in school? Kids in wherever they, they don't, you know, they're supposed to eat low salt, therefore less iodine. You know, they're not feeding them iodine-rich foods. How do we get iodine in our kids without, uh, giving them an AI form or Lugol's? Is there any way? The vast majority of people are salt deficient. I can tell you from checking tens of thousands of chemistries and my patients know I'm all, I saw patients today, I was bugging them, you know, I look at their chemistries. Sodium should be 141 milliequivalents per liter or higher. Chloride should be 105 milliequivalents per liter or higher. And most people aren't unless they're, they're taking it in. And our toxic world, we need more salt, and we need more iodine. So, um, kids need iodine, especially kids need iodine. They're growing, you know, their body's changing so fast. You know, in the book, I talk about dosing kids. I dose them lower for their size. Um, my kids took iodine growing up. Um, and, um, you know, I made them, once I diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, they got a lot more iodine. And, you know, I bumped them, I bumped them up as kids to 50 milligrams right away, and then their titers started to come right down. So I've got a, um, two-year-old, she takes a one drop of Lugol's every three days, and then plus whatever seafood. She's a good eater, so she gets some seafood in. And then my four-year-old son, he gets, uh, two drops twice a week. Um, I'm not overdosing my kids, right? No, not even close. Sounds like reasonable doses. Yeah. Now, let's, let's, I think, I think it's, I think I have in my book, you can't quote me on this because the book's sitting here, but I, I, I think it's 8 milligrams per kilogram. But I'm not sure what what that does. But I think it's milligrams per kilogram. Now, you know, as well as I do, that if a, if a woman is growing a baby in her body, and she is deficient in iodine, that can be disastrous. There's multiple research studies showing up to 15 IQ points are lost if the mom doesn't have enough iodine. And then when the newborn is is breastfeeding or or God forbid, drinking formula, if there's not enough, that child can actually grow up with 15 fewer IQ points. That's just an average from the studies I've seen. How, how important is it for a woman who's considering becoming pregnant, is pregnant, or is breastfeeding, and then for her, her infant? How, like, this is not just like, oh, we recommend you use a little iodine when you're pregnant. This is a big damn deal. Ladies, please listen up. And if you know anybody who's pregnant, you got to share this video with them because it literally could make that your grandchild, your nephew, whatever, they could have been an Einstein. Well, no, not now. It's all true. That was one of the worries of the government a hundred years ago was that, uh, it was known that iodine deficiency leads to cretinism, which is, you know, short stature, you know, very low IQ, and, you know, and other health problems. So, you're right. There's been studies showing significantly lower IQ scores in women who, who, you know, I, I have all those studies. I've lectured on them. In women, pregnant women are are deficient in iodine. So I've always said, um, it, it should be a priority for women of childbearing age to to have their iodine levels measured and to take iodine before they become pregnant. And, um, you know, again, if our public health people were working for us and not for, you know, the, the pharma cartel, you know, and in the big business cartel, you know, we, we'd have this rectified. But that's not what we see.
Yep, I totally agree. Dr. Brownstein, it's been a great pleasure and an honor to speak with you. A guy who I've been learning from since at least 2005, if not before. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm going to have a link to the book. This is the, what, fifth edition now? And so it's updated. I was reading a 2003 or four edition back when I first started this journey. Thank you for all your information over my decades of practice, and I know you've helped many other doctors as well. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me on.